Customer Rating:  
Summary: Not the best of the run
Comment: Like other comic junkies, I gobbled up this series (at least in trade form...). I really enjoyed the series overall, but not this one. Yes, it's an epic battle to save Opal from the bad guy.
MILD SPOILER:
But the bad guy was invented for this plot line, not an old villain returned or anything clever, and I HATE that trick. Why not *really* make Shade the bad guy? Robinson also brings in WAY too many side characters, and takes a long time to tell this story (back story is fine, but it can be overdone). For example, Adam Strange's appearance could have omitted and the story wouldn't have suffered.
You could stop reading Starman with book 8.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Graphic SF Reader
Comment: You get what you pays for, with this title. Big fight, and dead people, brought about by plotting and scheming, with the Shade-powers, Jack, and the local hero-cop family in the middle.
Opal City is a wonderful looking place, but now is the time it really needs its heroes. You know what Guignol in the title is going to mean, as well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Definitely *not* the volume to start with
Comment: This volume collects twelve issues of the magazine and the story is about . . . -- well, I'm really not sure *what* it's about. There's Jack Knight, an apparently non-superbeing (since he has to rely on some kind of unnamed tool-weapon to fly and is otherwise vulnerable to the usual threats of violence), whose father was an earlier version of Starman -- but there are several alluded-to earlier, future, and alternate-world Starmen. He apparently has a girlfriend, and he apparently got some other chick pregnant, but those themes are just dropped into the script without explanation. And someone Bad is attacking Opal City, but I have no idea why. The prose is excessively purple, the artwork is mediocre even by the 1960s style it resembles, and I lost patience halfway through, just giving the remainder a skim to see if I could pick up the plot somewhere. Yes, this is not the first volume published (there were sixty issues of the comic before this), but nearly every other middle-of-the-story book I've seen makes at least an effort to provide some backstory, if only by adding an introductory "catch up" chapter. Unless you are intimately familiar with all that went before in this series -- which I am not -- save your money.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The high point of James Robinson's Starman series
Comment: I didn't get a chance to read this storyline when it was first published by DC. (I quit buying comics when Robinson's Starman series was only beginning.) I am so glad I have bought this volume, and its predecessors, in trade paperback form. Starman is an grand, epic adventure story, but Jack Knight himself is a believable and likeable individual. He is not your typical superhero, and that's a very good thing!
"Grand Guignol" does not disappoint. Readers of the previous 8 volumes and fans of good superhero comics in general will treasure this book. Without giving too much away, we experience the tragedy of bombings and a full-scale criminal assault on Opal City, which is Jack's hometown and also the enigmatic Shade. Has the Shade really went off the deep end, returning to his super-villainous ways? Or is there a darker evil lurking?
To say that this is an excellent addition to any comic book collection is an understatement. This is one of those rare collected editions that make me proud of the industry, and it gives me hope that there is (and always will be) a market for quality monthly comics in the superhero genre. "Grand Guignol" is the type of action-packed, fun, and poignant trade paperback which elevates comic storytelling into an artform.
Recommended without hesitation!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Aptly named
Comment: This is the aptly-titled climax of the series, as the elaborate plans of the Shade (or are they?) come to fruition, and everyone gets into the act fighting for or against him. Folks die on both sides, and the action hurtles forward even with repeated and frequent digression issues on one or another cast member's past, or the past of the Opal itself. This is epic comic writing in a class of its own, with more backstory and foreshadowing than you can shake a cosmic rod at. Though it's way late in coming, I applaud DC for (3-4 years later) reprinting it. One more volume, and we should be set (and ready to reread the whole thing again).
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